A Reddit user said the closest he came to drawing in that thread started with what he thought was a normal night out. According to his comment, he had gone drinking with a woman he met on Tinder and had already seen a few times. She brought along her “best friend,” which turned out to be a 6-foot-4, 270-pound man the commenter described as stuffed with steroids and built big enough to make Navy SEALs look small. He said the guy was apparently secretly in love with her and was very unhappy that she was out with someone else.
The night went bad fast. The commenter wrote that the big guy assaulted him by smashing his hand in a car door. Then he started threatening to kill him. Not once or twice in the heat of an argument, but over and over. The Reddit user said the man repeated variations of “I’m going to kill you,” “I’ll break your fucking neck,” and “I swear to God I’ll fucking kill you” no fewer than 20 times. From the way he told it, this was not some vague drunk posturing from across a bar. The threat was close, physical, and backed by someone large enough that the risk felt very real.
He said he did not actually draw, but that was not because he felt safe. He wrote that he had a death grip on the handgun in his coat pocket the whole time and was fully prepared to use it if the man came any closer. His plan, as he described it later, was simple: if the guy moved toward him again, he would draw, order him to back off, and be ready to fire if he had to. He said he believed he had every legal and moral right to do it in that moment, but he was still trying to hold the line without turning a violent threat into a shooting if there was any other way out.
According to the comment, de-escalation finally worked. Whether the man sobered up slightly, realized the other guy might be armed, or simply burned himself out, he eventually backed down and walked away. The commenter said he was glad the night ended with him going home instead of killing someone because a drunk, jealous man had decided to explode over a woman. He told the story with a pretty blunt line about being happy he got to go home and enjoy the rest of his night rather than spend it over a body.
He also explained later why he had been so determined not to draw unless it became the only option. He said they were in a fairly busy area with no good direction to take a shot without risking a bystander. On top of that, there were at least 15 police officers within a stone’s throw, and he believed that if he had drawn or fired, those officers almost certainly would have had guns pointed at him too. He wrote that he was not willing to go down that road until there was literally no other choice left, and afterward he took the fact that de-escalation worked as proof that there really had been another option besides gunfire.
So the story he told was this: he went out drinking with a woman he had been seeing, she brought a giant “best friend” who was secretly into her, and the night turned violent when that man smashed his hand in a car door and threatened to kill him again and again. The commenter kept his hand on the pistol in his coat pocket the whole time, ready to draw if the man closed in, but held off because the area was crowded, police were nearby, and the situation had not yet left him with only one option. Eventually the attacker backed down, and the gun stayed in the pocket.
What do you think — if a man that big had already slammed your hand in a car door and was promising to kill you over and over, would you trust de-escalation to work, or assume the gun was coming out next?
Original Reddit post: What was a time you had to draw but not shoot?
